


break it fix it

by Kalgalen



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: (sorta) - Freeform, Body Horror, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 13:39:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15931562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalgalen/pseuds/Kalgalen
Summary: There's something to be said about your mechanic also being your best friend: you'll never have an issue with your prosthesis for as long as they're around. Hell, most of the time, they'll know something is wrong before you do.It also means that, sometimes, movie nights morph into maintenance night, but hey, better this than a limb suddenly refusing to function in a critical moment because you "forgot" to mention a weird twitch in your mechanical pinkie to your engineer, right?





	break it fix it

**Author's Note:**

> originally wanted to draw to draw a soft art of maxwell fixing jacobi's prosthesis, instead wrote a sad fic. Oh Well.

There's something to be said about your mechanic also being your best friend: you'll never have an issue with your prosthesis for as long as they're around. Hell, most of the time, they'll know something is wrong before you do.

It also means that, sometimes, movie nights morph into maintenance night, but hey, better this than a limb suddenly refusing to function in a critical moment because you "forgot" to mention a weird twitch in your mechanical pinkie to your engineer, right?

"Your elbow is making a weird noise," Maxwell says suddenly, halfway through their second viewing of Ghostbusters (the 2016 version, because it's the one Maxwell prefers, and that Jacobi doesn't care enough about the franchise to argue - and maybe, _maybe_ , because he's taken a shine to Kevin the Receptionist's uncomplicated dumbness and perfect physique. Maybe.)

He straightens up after putting his beer bottle back on the coffee table and experimentally flexes his left arm, listening for suspicious sounds. Nothing particular jumps to his ears.

"Are you sure?" He stretches his arm out in front of him, and while the resulting whir gets a pained wince out of Maxwell, he still can't detect anything off about the noise - although it's admittedly quiet, and somewhat drowned out by the sounds of explosions and yelled-out lines of dialogue coming out of the speakers.

Movie seemingly forgotten, Maxwell sets her own mug down on the table; it contains some kind of weird-smelling herbal tea, which is the furthest thing away from a party drink Jacobi can picture, but since Maxwell has elected to drink this instead of an alarming amount of energy drink (allowing herself, for once, to consider a full night of sleep) he's not going to argue.

"Arm," she orders, and Jacobi dutifully puts his robotic arm on her lap. She starts prodding at the offending joint, brows furrowed, her fingers running carefully over the synthetic skin as she checks for irregularities. Jacobi watches her work silently; it always feels strange and vaguely alienating to see someone touching a part of him without him being able to actually feel it. Goddard can do great things, but making a false limb feel like a real one isn't one of them.

Yet.

"Hmmm," Maxwell hums absentmindedly, leaning her head on the side as she bends Jacobi's arm.

"Your diagnosis, Doctor?" Jacobi asks, trying and failing to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. This is not how he imagined the night going, and although he appreciates Maxwell caring enough to act immediately when she feels something is amiss, he widely would have preferred they'd enjoy a nice, quiet night, and leave the potential robotic tinkering for Monday morning during work hours.

Jacobi vaguely toys with the idea of pitching a No Tools At Home policy - but then he thinks about the corner of his room dedicated to chemical elements that were probably never intended to be handled in a civilian environment, and promptly discards it.

"Did you hit your elbow recently? Something's out of alignment," Maxwell says, and Jacobi grimaces, because he knows where this is going. He thinks about lying for a second, but Maxwell's serious expression, mixed with concern, dissuades him quickly.

"I fell on it two days ago during training," he admits, looking away. "I thought it was alright, it didn't, like..."

"Hurt?" Maxwell says, but she sounds more amused than disapproving. "You know you don't have to be in pain to be harmed, Daniel."

Jacobi pointedly doesn't remind her of the numerous times she didn't observe binder safety and almost cracked a rib because she simply forgot she was wearing one, and instead takes his arm back, and nods in direction of Maxwell's room.

"Alright, go ahead, let's do this."

Maxwell half-rises from her seat, before looking between the TV screen and him, hesitating.

"Are you sure? We can do that after the movie, if you'd like."

Jacobi shrugs, trying to act nonchalant even as he can feel himself start to shake.

"You're the one who wanted to watch it, it's your call."

"Right."

Maxwell pads away to recover her tool kit in her room, and Jacobi lowers the sound of the movie until it's a dull background chatter before going to settle at the kitchen table, pushing away random papers and pieces of wires to clear an acceptable work area. He retrieves an old desk lamp abandoned in a corner of the living room and installs it on the table, plugging it in and flipping the switch on to provide a bright spot of light. He drops in the closest chair, the fingers of his right hand automatically flying to the place where his prosthesis fuses with his actual flesh. The transition from synthetic skin to organic is practically seamless, and would be even more so without the scarred tissue that marks the end of his real arm. They could have fixed is; make it smooth and unblemished, as if nothing had even happened. He'd refused - he can't remember exactly why now, his memories made blurry with time and by the amount of painkiller he was on. Something about looking bad-ass with scars, probably. Maybe he'd wanted to keep a mark of his failure, as some kind of punishment. Now, he just likes the reminder - that he's not invulnerable, that he can actually die.

That he almost died once already, and that the only thing that had stood between him and bleeding out on the floor of an underground bunker had been his team - the two people he would actually give his life for.

Maxwell yanks him out of his thoughts when she comes back, setting her tool box on the table and flipping it open with practiced ease.

"Let's see what we have here, Mister Jacobi," she says. Her tone is artificially playful, as if she knows he's straying somewhere dark and is trying to get him out of it before it's too late.

Of course she knows.

Silently, Jacobi lays his arm on the table, as flat as he can. Maxwell selects a few tools from her box - long silvery things he should be able to remember the name of, since he occasionally borrows them for his most finicky creations, but his mind is clouded and unhelpful. Brows furrowed, Maxwell leans over and gets to work. Jacobi tries not to flinch - he should be used to it, to the cold steel sliding in the barely perceptible gap between the stump of his arm and the prosthesis, but he still expects to feel pain as Maxwell carefully presses on the flaps that lock the two together.

"You don't have to look," Maxwell says without looking up - because she already knows what he's going to answer, and it's more of an habit than a genuine reassurance.

"It's fine," Jacobi says mechanically, and Maxwell huffs, but doesn't say anything more as she finishes unlatching the prosthesis from its socket.

With a final click, the limb is gone. He can still see it, of course, still lying on the tabletop, still touching his body but definitely not a part of him anymore. He flexes the fingers of his dead hand experimentally, half-expecting to see the robotic fingers twitch. Nothing happens, of course.

Of course.

"I'm going to take it away now," Maxwell warns.

Jacobi nods numbly in answer, and with a twist and a pull, Maxwell detaches the arm from its socket.

This is fine. This is _fine._

It shouldn't feel so weird, _he_ shouldn't feel so weird - his original arm has been gone for a while, he should be dealing better, it's just a detail -

Maxwell delicately peels the synthetic skin off the limb, and Jacobi stands up brusquely, nauseous.

"I'm going to get some air," he mumbles, and Maxwell shoots him a worried glance, but she knows better than to try and talk to him about it.

Jacobi grabs the lighter and the pack of cigarettes left lying on the coffee table and stumbles across the apartment as if on autopilot, pushing the door of his room open, unlocking the window, breathing in the chill air until the fog clears from his brain. He fumbles a bit to light a cigarette - thumbing the pack open, catching one between his teeth, putting the carton down on the windowsill to light it. The first lungful tastes like being human feels - nasty but familiar, the taste of a bad habit and a treat simultaneously - and he savors it, holding it in before blowing it out slowly.

There's not much to do while he waits for Maxwell to be done; he doesn't want to get back in there, and Maxwell isn't particularly chatty when she's working on delicate mechanisms. He doesn't hurry, letting the smoking guide his breathing in a more relaxed pattern, and looks over the streets below, mostly empty at this time of the evening. Further away, the skyline shoots up spires of black glass and sleet toward the muddy twilight sky. Jacobi has been to places so far away from civilization the sky at night is so full of stars, so full of _depth_ you feel like you might fall into it if you let your feet leave the ground; here, the lights of the city bleed into the darkness, making it an opaque dome separating them from the rest of the universe.

Goddard has been sending people up there for decades, Jacobi thinks, blowing a lazy ring of smoke toward the invisible stars. He'd like to go, maybe, one day.

There are three cigarette butts stubbed out on the windowsill by the time he hears the door squeak softly and footsteps approaching behind him. Maxwell appears on his right, playfully shoving him to the side so she can fit in the window-frame beside him.

"I'm done," she says. "Nothing too critical, but I fixed another few things while I was in there."

She doesn't say it, and she doesn't look at him, but Jacobi can feel the question in the shoulder pressed against his.  _Are you okay? What can I do?_

"Thanks," he says, and presses back. _Thanks. I'm fine._

They stay there a few more minutes, enjoying the quiet night time breeze, then Jacobi pushes away.

"Alright, let's get this thing back on."

* * *

Nineteen months and eight light years away later, in the quiet weightlessness of the Hephaestus, Jacobi carefully flexes his arm; the artificial elbow whines mournfully. No one else is around to hear it.

No one else is around to _fix_ it.


End file.
